


Nattmara

by moodiful819



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood, Blood and Gore, Changing Tenses, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Dream Demon, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Gore, How Do I Tag, Sensuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 05:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12834579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodiful819/pseuds/moodiful819
Summary: A demon visits Ben in his sleep. He wonders if she’s ever had a meal make itself so amenable like this before. [Reylo]





	Nattmara

**Author's Note:**

> I’m trying to get back into the swing of writing before I go back to my long projects. Also, I just didn’t want to remember I’m in grad school. Dedicated to winterofherdiscontent on tumblr.

He swears he feels her on his chest and reaches out towards her before slamming his hands down. He can’t touch her, and it’s not hard. Not when his eyes are being plucked out of his head with drills and screws. 

It takes everything he has not to scream and let the bugs in.

By the time he’s sure he hasn’t bit off his tongue and choked on the blood, he’s in another dream—

Except dream is the wrong word. Dreams are not horrifying and not filled with images of bloody ripping tendons and the final rattling gasp of his father as he impales him on a fiery sword.

But it’s the only way he can see her (though he uses the term loosely). He feels her at the edge of his consciousness, a dark presence burrowing into the marrow of his being. 

He’s only seen her once, by accident. 

Caught in the throes of a nightmare where his former classmates stabbed him repeatedly with glowing sabers while he was pinned to a table, he shouted. Bolted upright and awoke so fiercely that he didn’t even notice his intruder until the third sweaty gulp for air. She was spilled across the floor at the foot of his bed, a gnarled waif with dark hair and fierce, feral eyes. 

At first, neither knew what to make of what had happened or what was currently going on, and the longer he stared, the more he began to see of her starved appearance. From under the edge of her nightgown, Ben could see the hills and valleys of her ribs and the faintest hint of the curve of her breast. Her hands and feet were bare, but oddly darkened—as if she’d plunged and crawled through oil or soot all her life—and he could feel her stare burning through him like paper. 

When he moved to push the sheets aside, he watched her scramble away like a cornered animal. A boom of thunder shot through his room and through his head, deafening him and rattling his skull. In the confusion, her form burst and  he watched the last of her drip out of the window he’d forgotten to close before the storm, a slow trail of black sand disappearing into the night.

She’s returned since then. He’s made sure of it. Thrown himself into research and made sure to prepare his room for her arrival. He wonders if she’s ever had a meal make itself so amenable like this before. All he knows is that his window is always cracked open at night now and that the area around his bed has never been so clean.

He doesn’t know why he is doing this though—why he is hellbent on summoning a demon to himself every night. The dreams she brings with her arrival are awful and the effects of her feeds are beginning to show on his body. His mother has stopped asking, but he can still feel her concerned gaze at the breakfast table in the mornings. He’s lost weight, gotten paler with dark circles around his eyes. The only reason he knows he isn’t dead yet is the skin still stretched over his bones, moving with every motion of his jaw and pulse of his thudding heart. 

It doesn’t stop him from feeling like he is dying.

And perhaps he is. Perhaps he should feel more concerned about his well-being and the fact a demon leeches life from his body every night and tortures him in his sleep.

But he remembers her face and those eyes that held him so fiercely with their pride and disdain. He wishes he could see them again, run his fingers over her nightgown if only to feel what it was made off…

But the cruel irony of the Nattmara is that he will never be able to. Even as she sits on his chest, legs braced by his ribs as she rides him through the night and tantalizingly close to his touch, he will never be able to see or feel her. She is nothing but a dark ghostly shadow in his life.

He feels her presence as a weight on his chest. Not a rock, but the thick drip of sludge creeping into his lungs to drown him. His head pulses with pain. The preamble to yet another nightmare.

He’s burning again, a repeat of another nightmare where he falls into lava and cannot get out. These dreams (nightmares?) seem connected to each other somehow, but he’s long since given up trying to understand them. A story is no use to a man burning alive in agony and want.

He can feel his skin and fat melting, feel his nerves curdling from the heat. To distract himself, he wonders how she feeds—if she sinks her fingers into his temples to eat his thoughts or digs them into his chest to steal the breath from his lungs. He wonders if she has to breathe him in to feed, mouth open to drink in the life she takes away. Does her temperature rise when she rides him or is she cold, he wonders. 

Maybe that’s why he burns in so many of his dreams now.

The pain sears forth again, hard enough to make him cry. He thinks he can feel himself bite his lip in real life and wonders if he’s drawn blood. It makes him wonder if it’s worth it to subject himself to this, night after night, week after week, month after month. It would be easy to rid himself of this scavenger; the research he’d done had taught him how to repel her as well as attract.

As if sensing his thoughts, he feels her presence brush over his consciousness—an impish grin over his face as the core of her burns over his heart. She’s close enough to him that he swears he could breathe her in and he wonders what her lips feel like... what they would feel like on his… and his lovesick desperation only fuels his self-loathing more.

He hates this weakness she has brought out in him, feels the shell of his former pride curl up even tighter with disdain. He is too old and  _ should _ be too smart for this. The night of the storm was a moment of weakness. A brief collapse of his sanity from the pressures of applying to graduate school and an uncertain future. He needs to be stronger than this.

By the time he’s made up his mind, he’s in another dream. Mercifully, it is cold, and wrapped up in thick, black clothing, he is even comfortable in the snow. The sword he’s killed his father with is holstered at his hip, dormant at last, while his body aches and throbs with fresh wounds that he remembers only in a haze. A silver object juts out in a snow bank a few yards away, calling to him. He extends his hand…

And narrowly dodges it as it cuts through the air into the hands of another. She’s different here, but similar. The nightgown and soot are gone, but there is no mistaking the ferocity in those eyes.

In the back of his head, a name calls out to him.  _ Rey… _

Unbidden, his sword alights in his hand. Only distantly does he realizes he has fallen so easily once more to her web. 

But the thought quickly falls aside, and the chase begins once again.


End file.
